Larry Mazza exposes the Colombo family's corruption, detailing how Greg Scarpa Sr., a thirty-year FBI informant known as the Grim Reaper, groomed Mazza through an affair with Scarpa's wife while simultaneously threatening him. Mazza recounts witnessing Tony Frezza's murder, the botched assassination of Vic Arena, and Scarpa's eventual downfall after dementia and his son's drug trade led to a violent confrontation. The narrative shifts to the making of The Irishman, where Mazza collaborated with Scorsese and De Niro, clarifying that Scarpa's "666" beeper code was merely a logistical tool rather than a satanic symbol. Ultimately, Mazza's testimony dismantled mob trials, proving that internal betrayal and government infiltration drove the organization's collapse more than traditional criminal codes. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Surfing Cocoa Beach Life00:06:35
Mr. Larry, is that how you pronounce it?
Maza?
Maza or Maza?
Maza or Maza?
Yeah.
Okay.
Cool, man.
Well, I appreciate you coming here and doing this.
Doing this with me, man.
My pleasure.
Cocoa Beach.
You live in Cocoa Beach?
Yes.
What's it like living over there?
You know, it's a little quieter than the Tampa area.
Very definitely.
It's beachy.
It's right on the beach.
And it's old school.
They really haven't caught up with the times yet, like, you know, Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
There's not many high rises.
Most of them are.
I think they stopped at eight stories.
Yeah.
You know, the condos.
Yeah, Cocoa Beach is an interesting place, man.
Yeah.
Hometown of Kelly Slater.
Yes.
Yep.
They got the nice big shrine of him right there on the main entrance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I got a gym there.
Oh, do you?
Oh, yeah.
Someday they're going to have a shrine of me.
Okay.
Hell yeah.
I've trained so many people at Cocoa Beach over the years.
Yeah.
So.
That's awesome.
Do you ever surf?
I never surfed.
It's a big surf town.
No, I never did it in my life.
I enjoy the ocean.
Yeah.
I love the waves, all of that.
But I have never surfed.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So for people who.
Aren't familiar with your story, and I know you have a book out, and you just sold or you optioned your film to a big company that pops it?
I've seen My Life Rights.
Okay.
And to a company that Joe Paletto is the producer.
Uh huh.
And he's ultimately going to have his own platform, his own Netflix type.
And it's going to happen very soon, probably in a few weeks.
So he's looking for lots of material.
He's already licensed probably hundreds of movies.
So, it's going to be a mob TV like 24 7.
Oh, cool.
So, yeah, that's going to be a real.
And like I said, it's just weeks away now.
Wasn't there also a movie or something that you starred in that you.
Well, I didn't star in it.
I was a consultant to De Niro in The Irishman.
Oh, okay.
And I did get a part in the movie.
I played a hitman.
Oh, wow.
That's recent, right?
That movie came out last year?
Yeah, just last year.
Okay.
Right, baby?
I think last year it came out.
Yeah.
So, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but for people who aren't familiar with your story, just give me like a brief background of who you are and where you came from.
You know, it's always nice to start it that way.
The way you did because it's such good stuff.
I've got, you know, where I am now, it's a blessing.
I have, you know, a screenplay in the works.
Nick Pileggi's writing it.
Terry Winter is also involved.
He's, you know, written The Sopranos and, you know, so many movies like Origin Gangster, Boardwalk Empire.
But, you know, and what got me there was the cops that were on my case.
They were part of the task force back in, I guess, around the 90s.
Uh 90 89 90, 91 are now De Nero's private security really.
So yeah, after they retired they went into that and when he was looking for somebody they all knew me well and they says Larry's the guy you want.
He read the book uh, it's called The Life and he said it was terrific several times uh, and he had a plan for it.
But you know he's so busy and got so much going on in his life it's too slow for me.
So this Joe Paletto came in and took it and we're moving.
But now go back to what got me is, you know, I was a made guy in the Colombo family and I, you know, I didn't start out that way.
I started out a normal upbringing.
My father was a lieutenant in a fire department.
My mom worked in a bank.
You know, we went to Catholic school, my brother, my sister, myself.
And, you know, we had everything we wanted growing up, you know, not that we were rich.
But we were expected to do well in school.
You know, we were pressed to do well.
And I went all the way up to college.
I did a year of college, John Jay College, criminal justice.
So, yeah, it's ironic, huh?
Yeah, that's funny.
But somewhere, you know, just about six months before I went to college, I met an older woman while I was working in a supermarket.
And her name was Linda and very attractive.
And like, I was not quite 18 and she was about 32.
So it was sort of a mutual attraction and seduction, whatever word you want to use.
We wound up having an affair.
I found out soon after that she was married.
I knew she had two kids, but I never met the husband.
The husband was always gone.
He was always away, so I was assuming he was a businessman or uh, a doctor, just with crazy hours.
Get that thing a little closer to you okay, just pull it.
Just pull it towards you there.
Yeah and uh, or you can scoot, yeah either way.
And ultimately I find out later on uh, that he is one of the bosses in the Colombo family and his name's Greg Scarpa and they called him the Grim Reaper.
He had the.
I mean, he told me he stopped counting at 50 bodies, and he's probably got 100 or 200.
I mean, it's probably one of the most feared mob guys in history.
Yeah.
So.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
The way I found out was.
Now, sorry to interrupt.
When you were that age, did you know anything about mafia?
Not a lot.
I knew there were these social clubs all over the place where the guys always dressed. better and never worked and had the caddies, that type of thing.
You knew it was there, but I didn't know anything about the rules or the real actual lifestyle, the life.
I didn't really know what it meant to be in that life until later on, obviously.
And I did have an Uncle Albert who was a dinosaur with the Colombo family.
He died at like 93 years old or 94 years old, and he was very, very well liked in and out of that life.
He was one of those guys that you see in movies where they like the mob guy.
He was that guy.
Greg, on the other hand, was just a vicious, greedy, ruthless mob guy.
And I've wound up somewhere in between because growing up under Greg Scarpa, you had to produce.
Uncle Albert and the Mob00:06:17
You couldn't be weak.
You couldn't show any weakness.
So I learned to be a gangster like Greg.
It's summer.
Camping season.
Let's talk about pitching tents.
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Okay, so you're having an affair with this woman who's over more than 10 years older than you.
Yes.
And then you find out that she's married to a guy who's an infamous murderer.
Right.
How does that not freak you out?
How do you not run for the hills when you find out?
It did.
It did.
But here's what happened.
She broke it like little bits and pieces.
She said, told me first he was an influential guy, he could help you in business.
And they actually put me in charge.
Of sales.
They had a company, paper products and fire extinguishers, cleaning supplies to furnish all kinds of businesses, restaurants.
They just made me the sales manager.
Just came in and she told him that she had a guy that can do it.
And next thing I know, I meet him that way.
So now going to different establishments to get the business, if they said no, the next day he would send somebody.
To the place and say, All right, Larry, you go back tomorrow.
I would go back.
They were so happy to sign me up.
So the business was, I started understanding, you know, of exactly what he was.
But where I.
So he was strong arming people to do business with you.
Yeah, to make sure they gave me the business.
Yes, that was his influence.
And it was going well for a while.
But what happened was because now I knew him personally and he was helping me and making me successful in this space.
first legitimate business, I started feeling guilty and paranoid.
I said, now it's really, really bad.
If he finds out, he's got to kill me.
You know, I know who he is now.
So this went on for months, and he saw the, you know, I did some things that were paranoid.
Like when he would call me to a meeting, I wouldn't go.
I said, he's going to kill me tonight, you know, or if he wanted me to drop him off downtown or bring him somewhere.
And I was always the one to do it, but I started worrying.
I said, one of these trips, I'm not coming home.
Because he's going to find out about your wife.
Yeah.
So ultimately, somewhere along the way, they discussed it or she told him.
You know, there's a lot of theories now.
People think he might have known from the very beginning.
Very possible.
Some say, well, the other thing you've got to know is he had two other wives.
Yes.
At the same time?
Yes.
So he had three.
He had one that was living in Vegas, an Israeli beauty queen.
He had Connie, who was his first wife.
With his first children.
And then he had Linda, who actually was a common law.
I don't think, I'm pretty sure they never got married.
You know, we found that out later on.
So he was juggling three wives and three lives.
So the other theory is that I made it easier for him because his youngest wife now wasn't going to complain when he wasn't around.
She had her own little toy or her own.
Keeping her occupied.
Right.
So anyway, he confronts me with it one day.
We're driving to the club.
And he knew because just a couple of days earlier, I didn't show up somewhere.
And he said, That's not like you.
He said, Something's wrong.
So on the way, he started breaking the ice.
It's just us two in the car, and we would get to the club every day about a half hour before the rest of the men showed up.
And on the way, he's saying things like, He loves me like a son.
You know, Linda loves you.
I'm going to have this conversation with you because I think you're very mature for your age.
I'm only 19 now.
This was about a year and a half later we had this talk.
And we wound up getting out of the car, walking into the club.
We go, he sits down behind the desk.
I sit at my spot on the other side of the desk like we do every day.
And he's gone on, and finally he says, I know about you and Linda.
So my heart's beating.
And I remember always saying that I would never admit it.
I would never, ever admit it.
I just have to deny it.
But something came over me like it was do or die.
It was time.
I mean, I loved her.
I didn't want to not be with her.
And my answer to him was, Greg, I have a lot of respect for you.
The Secret Club Talk00:15:25
You know that.
And I think you are far from an idiot.
But only an idiot wouldn't see it, what was going on.
I mean, He knows I'm there, you know, constantly.
I'm with her all the time, even when he's away.
You know, and I didn't believe he really thought I was helping her around the house and shopping for her.
You know, I mean, come on.
After all this time.
So I sort of, maybe deep inside, I knew that he knew.
It's just a weird, weird time.
It was very rough.
It was tough.
But now the weight of the world was off my shoulders.
But I did learn one of the main rules that day.
He took me outside.
You know, we would hang out on a parking meter, lean on the meter, get some sun.
And he told me that it's okay.
He says, I'm fine with it.
If anybody outside the three of us finds out, he says, you and I will be killed.
It's a rule.
Somebody could kill the Grim Reaper?
Well, yeah.
We're breaking one of the rules that is told to you the day you become a made guy.
You know, you never turn on the family.
You have to come whenever the family calls for you.
They come first.
No drugs.
Obviously, no talking to the law and no messing around with other people's wives or girlfriends.
So I learned that rule that day, but as the years went on, I also learned every one of those rules is broken.
It's a facade.
Wow.
Everyone.
There were so many guys dealing drugs, so many guys dealing with the feds.
My boss himself was a 30-year informant.
That's like the coup de grace, the end of the story of my life, to find out that he was.
You know, an informant for 30 years.
That's interesting.
I had a guy on here.
I think the only other guy that I've had on the show who was like previous Mafia was John A. Light.
Yeah, Johnny.
And he was saying the same thing, basically.
Yeah, there's no.
Yeah, no, it isn't.
Like I said, the drugs is running rampant.
You know, there were guys messing around with people, and it was known.
It was like John Gotti was with his boss at the time, Della Croach.
He was with the daughter.
And Sammy the Bull told me that.
He didn't have to lie about it.
He.
You know, he says he's, you know, the biggest hypocrite of all of us.
You know uh, he was big into the drugs.
He was sleeping with his boss's daughter and she.
They were both married.
I mean, it was a you know.
So Sammy the Bull was running around the same time frame.
He was uh yeah well yeah, we've seen a different.
He was a Gambino family Gambino, another family, we were the Colombo family, but I was friends with him in the street.
We played ball together, really racquetball.
Uh, what was he like?
Um, Sammy was no nonsense.
Uh, tough guy all the way.
Uh, a killer.
Uh, Big money, aren't I?
And did you know, like, this guy's a killer?
Well, later on I did when I was in the life, yes.
This is not like you're just like, you hang out with these guys, you guys are both of them.
No, no.
This is not casual conversation.
No, we used to go to the same racquetball and weight club.
So, and he was into boxing.
I was into martial arts and then boxing also.
So we actually sparred a few times, you know.
But he's, I like him.
I like Sammy.
He's very witty.
He's a smart guy.
And, you know, he's a survivor, obviously.
You know, to be up against what he was up against, you know, everybody wants to call people rats and things like that.
I always say there's a lot of different ways to break that rule.
Some guys cop out and admit things that are hurting the next wave of defendants.
That happened on my case, where guys came in, they admitted there was a war, they admitted they were part of the Colombo family.
They don't have to prove that anymore.
These guys just admitted it, so that becomes evidence against you.
But they got their reasonable deal, and they were happy.
John Gotti talking on the tips the way he did and being flamboyant.
Being in the public eye the way he was all the time.
That's not a good thing.
And then other guys do it like my boss did.
The smartest way of all, just be partners with an FBI agent your whole career and you'll never get arrested.
And that's what happened with him.
Wow.
Yeah.
He sold his own son out, Greg Jr., who I'm still very friendly with.
He did 33 years, Greg Jr.
And when the father died, he did a deathbed confession.
And he saved other people.
He didn't put me or his son as part of the deathbed confession, exonerating us.
So, yeah.
And is there stuff that he could have said that would have exonerated us?
He could have said that all I did was drive him places.
He was my driver.
He didn't know anything about the hits.
It's what he did for Alleyboy, Persico, who was the boss of the big boss of the family, Carmine Persico's son.
And while I was away, Alleyboy told me that him and his father knew about Greg for the last 20 years.
Knew about him talking to that guy.
Yeah, I knew that he was, yeah, yeah.
And then I found out later on there was an actual case from one of the attorneys on our case that I'm friends with now way after.
There was a very big tax indictment, okay?
And about eight of the guys, heavyweights in the family, were all indicted.
Greg was one of them.
So they all show up to the first arraignment.
And it gets delayed.
You know, they always put it off for weeks.
They come back to the next one.
They're all there except Greg.
They have to delay it again.
A few weeks later, they show up again.
No Greg.
The fourth time, they show up.
No Greg.
They throw the case out.
Okay?
So those guys, Junior Persico was on that case.
So he had to know something.
But either he felt he helped us.
So, what's the problem?
Plus, they knew he could kill without having a problem.
They're never going to arrest him.
So, they had him doing a lot of work over the years.
Plus, he was an enormous earner.
So, all those things, they gave him a pass for being partners with an FBI agent.
Is that a super rare, valuable trait in somebody to be able to murder without emotion?
Yeah, and the truth is, because most of the guys that I know aren't that way.
Like, you know, even Sammy.
Sammy, you know, he told me, he says, I never, you know, Pete, they got me like I love killing.
I don't.
I hate it.
I hate it.
He says, and when I get, when I have to do it, he says, I'm so mad at the person for breaking a rule and forcing me to have to do this.
You know, it's business.
It's hard to realize that.
And they say the human body can get used to anything.
You can endure anything.
And eventually it just becomes a way of life, you know.
But Greg could kill you.
There was a lawyer that once described him as good looking, articulate.
He said something like he could sit down with judges and lawyers, have dinner with you, and for dessert, he'll kill you.
That's how they described Greg.
And we had the tape.
This lawyer got caught with heroin, got arrested, so he immediately cooperated.
And they were interviewing him about all the guys from the Colombo family that he dealt with.
And we had the tape.
So how did we get that tape?
You know, Greg's connection got it.
And this became, as we look back on, you know, in time, the handwriting was on the wall.
We just couldn't believe it, knowing he was such a killer.
You know, I'll tell you what happened during the war, which, I mean, really made it certain.
But there were things like Greg Jr. told me that just weird things that would happen where his father wasn't part of something.
The next day he found out they all got pinched.
You know a lot of that but there's a lot more of that going on that you know like Whitey Bulger yeah, you know I'm sure those aren't the only two you know there's Yeah, Whitey Bulger he that's a fascinating story.
Yeah about him.
Oh, absolutely and how they tested did those experiments on him in prison.
I don't know if you heard about all that stuff.
No, I didn't I didn't saw that the there's like a famous government program called MK ultra during the During the What's the serial killer's name?
Charles Manson.
During his whole era, his brain, they were testing these mind control, CIA mind control tactics on prisoners by basically giving them certain doses of LSD every single day.
Wow.
And they were doing that to Wadi Bolger while he was in prison.
And I think he talked about it, but it was like a CIA experiment, a mind control experiment.
Wow.
Anyways, so I'm curious about what kind of human traits did you notice?
In a guy like this Gregory, who what that makes him able to just murder somebody.
Well, you know, it's the same thing it's it's, it becomes second nature.
He he, he was a, he was born in the life.
I mean at 15, 16 years old he was already in the street stealing, beating people up, doing all the things that.
Uh, he was conditioned very, very young age.
An up and coming guy and somebody that's already in the life sees this trait in him, sees that he's he's uh, he's tough uh, he's got balls, he's got, you know, got what it takes, okay.
And then they groom you.
Okay, I was groomed.
I was taught, educated the way of the life.
I don't think that's happening anymore today because I could see the different people that are in the life now.
It's not the same.
It's definitely not the same.
They miss that grooming and teaching and having a person become a consummate wise guy.
That when you walk into a place, they know who you are.
You don't have to tell them.
They say, this guy's somebody to respect.
And Greg always had that.
He got straightened out, I think he was 18.
He got his button.
What does that mean?
When you get made into the family.
Okay.
Officially inducted.
Okay.
To become an official member of the family.
To have it at that age, you had to have somebody that saw a lot about you.
And he loved money.
He loved money.
So there's nothing he wouldn't do to earn money.
I mean, every racket there was, he was in.
You know, from Joker poker machines to the number business, Shylock.
And he was a Shylock to Shylocks.
What's a Shylock?
You lend money at exorbitant rates.
So you give a guy $1,000 and you could charge anywhere from, he would charge me $10, but I would charge.
30, 40, or 50 per week.
That's the interest.
They have to pay that every week until they hand you back the thousand.
Okay.
So he had, he was making, I mean, just what I knew about from the close guys, about $25,000 a week in interest.
Every week without fail.
Nobody missed payments.
All the people that were getting these loans from him knew that the collateral was their life.
Yes.
Well, their well being.
Right.
They're going to kill them for a week.
Right.
We went to work on guys all the time that didn't pay.
And even that became.
you know, second nature.
You know, they start you out where you're doing, where somebody you're beating up did something very bad, like robbed an old woman in the neighborhood, okay?
Or found out they were selling drugs by the school.
We go give them a beating.
You feel proud, in a way.
You think you did the right thing.
You got this drug dealer away from the school, or you got even with this person that robbed a friend's grandmother, you know?
Then you participate just because a guy owes money.
But you're already seasoned.
They take baby steps.
They never ask you to kill your friend.
That's like a myth.
Like your best friend.
No.
They're not going to ask you to kill the movies.
Right.
The ones they're going to ask you to kill is somebody, again, early on, somebody that did something really bad.
Later on, it becomes looser.
This guy had a fight with Junior Persico's nephew.
And Junior Persico's nephew lost a fight.
We have to go kill the guy.
I mean, it's a fight.
I got in fights growing up.
I would have been killed five times for winning a fight.
I lost fights too, don't get me wrong.
But it's just, I actually got called to a meeting that I was in after hours, and we weren't supposed to be in after hours.
What's after hours?
Okay, the nightclubs close at 4 o'clock, and there's clubs that open at 4.
Oh, shit.
Yeah, they're illegal, but, you know, they were all around.
So I was in one of these places, and I get a beef with, I find out later on, it's Paul Castellano's nephew.
I didn't know.
And he picked a bad time because I was really at the peak of my martial arts.
I was good.
And I won the fight, okay?
I didn't abuse him.
I didn't keep hitting him when he was down.
Once he went down, and I walked away, it was over.
The next night, I get a call.
I have to go to the diner.
And it's like late at night, almost morning.
It's one of those 24-hour diners, you know.
And I'm thinking to myself, why do I got to go see Greg at 2 o'clock in the morning?
You know, it's a little oh, it's Greg you had to go see.
Well, he's doing that call for me.
Right.
So I get there.
I see Sammy the Bull hanging out outside.
He says hello to me.
I walk in.
Who's sitting?
Scappy, our captain, Greg, and Paul Castellano.
You're shitting your pants.
So, I don't know what happened yet.
Greg now comes over to me and walks me outside to the front door and he says, What happened last night?
I said, What are you talking about?
I says, We went out.
I says, You got a beef?
I said, Oh, yeah, I got a fight.
I says, You know, it happened once in a while.
He says, Well, that was Paulie's nephew.
So I said, I didn't know.
And he's telling me he wants satisfaction.
He wants to kill me.
So Scappy, but I learned a lesson here, too.
So Scappy is talking on our behalf.
He's captain.
He was a boss for a while.
Very well respected.
And, uh, So I remember now he's Paul's talking to me.
Greg Wants Satisfaction00:15:20
He says, If it wasn't for Scappy, okay, you'd be dead already.
Now, Greg got mad.
So he says, If a hair is harmed on his head, I said, You'll find more bodies in the street.
Now, Scappy had it to Greg.
You know, he shouldn't have said that, but he's feared.
Paul would have shit his pants if they had to go to war together.
You know, Paul was no Greg.
Right.
He was a boss and he was a businessman.
So, anyway, long story short, I had to like.
I owed Scappy my life now.
Right.
Because he saved me.
So now I owed him.
What kind of a guy was Scappy?
Scappy, old school, old time mob guy that died in prison.
He got 133 years.
And he's the guy that they quoted the newspaper.
When he got 133 years, he looked at Junior Persker.
He says, Well, we only got to do two thirds.
And it was in the newspaper.
And when he got the time, he was about 65.
So obviously he was never coming home.
Junior never came home.
So anyway, the funny part of this is.
After it's over with, I walk outside.
I talk to Sammy real quick.
And he said, while I'm walking away, he says, you should have killed that cocksucker.
He didn't like the kid.
He didn't like the kid.
So that was funny.
Yeah.
So Sammy, did Sammy kind of have your back too?
Was Sammy part of the same gang?
No, he was there to be with the other guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Paul Castellano.
Fuck.
The Gambino family.
But we were friends.
So I said, we had a rapport, you know.
And he knew me.
So if this guy would have had his way, Sammy would have been the guy to kill you?
Oh, yeah, that's a good question.
I don't, that's a good question.
Could be.
Could be.
It's a great question.
I don't know that, yeah, I don't think Greg would have allowed me to get in the car there.
And then the other thing is this typically, they wouldn't let somebody else do it.
If it came down to, and I'm going to tell you a story where I had to be killed, my own family would do it.
They wouldn't allow Gambinos to do it.
And there's a reason.
They figure they'll torture me, they'll make it real hard.
You want them away?
We'll get rid of them.
We had a friend of ours, Tony Frezza, who used to like to go out and drink.
And when he did Coke, he got a little crazy.
And he liked the Coke.
So he was in Sammy's club called Tallies.
And he winds up getting out of hand, acting crazy, whatever.
The owner, Joey, Joey D'Angelo was his name, tells him he's got to leave.
And he's a good fella.
Tony wasn't a wise guy.
So he doesn't go.
So now a couple of the guys bounce.
They.
Physically take him out.
He goes home, gets his gun, comes back, and kills the good fella.
That's a mortal sin.
Can't even raise your hands to a good fella.
So he winds up, Scappy tells him, Get out of town.
He goes down, comes down to Florida.
I might have been in this area, Tampa.
So he comes down to Florida.
Yeah, I think it was Tampa.
It's funny.
And he's trying to sort this out.
So he goes to have the meeting with the Gambino family.
And I'll never forget this either.
We know he's at the meeting, and we're waiting for him to come back.
We all like Tony.
He's one of us.
He's a tough guy.
He's good.
You know, we all liked him.
He comes walking in, Scappy.
He used to walk in bouncing his keys in his hand.
So we heard him come in.
And he always said, gentlemen.
That's what he did.
He says, gentlemen.
And we're all waiting.
He says, I got good news and I got bad news.
He says, the bad news is Tony's got to go.
The good news is we get to do it.
How chilling is that?
That was the good news.
But I understood they would have probably tortured him for what he did to Joey D'Angelo.
So, yeah, it's, you know, and I was on the outskirts of that, one of my early hits.
Were you there for that?
I wasn't at the actual shooting, but I was there.
I actually picked Tony up with Mario at the airport and drove him to where Greg Jr. was waiting for him.
Did he know that he was about to be executed?
No.
He thought, as a matter of fact, we made a stop.
And Mario ran in and bought Coke.
Really?
So he thought everybody was going to go party.
And at that time, I didn't do a lot of drugs or anything.
I drank a little bit.
Anyway, and the hole was already dug in the woods behind Gregory's house.
And somebody flipped years later and told where the body was.
Why wouldn't they just be like, if they really loved this guy like a brother, why wouldn't you just be like, yo, go to the Bahamas, don't come back?
That's what I said I would have done.
Again, it's a difference, but a guy like Scappy who lives by the rules of Cozen Ostra, he probably couldn't live with himself.
He says, if it was the other way around, if they hurt one of our good fellas, you know, we'd want the same satisfaction.
So there are guys at a certain level who live this life that know the rules and they just take it to the grave with them, you know.
Plus, I guess you have to always have that concern in the back of your mind.
If this guy does come back, then we're really fucked.
Then there's a war.
Then there's a war.
And then they could ask for two guys.
Then Scappy's life could.
You lied to us.
So, yeah.
And there were others.
I mean, Bucky was a friend of ours that, but not a good fella when I say that, but he was our friend that got into the drug business.
And he was told to stop.
And this is why it's hypocritical, because just five, six years later, we were the biggest drug crew in Brooklyn.
And I'll tell you how that happened in a minute.
But Bucky got killed.
For dabbling in the drug business.
And he was one of us.
But again, it was a rule.
You're not supposed to be dealing drugs.
Could you guys find a more humane way to kill your own?
I mean, these guys are kind of like your friends.
I mean, you just always shoot them, or was there a better way to do it?
The only thing I ever knew was a gun.
I never heard of guys with knives, never heard of poison.
The only bombing I heard of was when they tried to bomb John Gotti and they got.
Frankie DeChico instead, who was on the Paul Castellano hit.
And it was another family.
The Chins family and some of the other families never sanctioned that hit that John Gotti did on Castellano.
You can't kill a boss.
It's a rule.
You just can't do it.
Because if that starts happening, John's own counselor told him, what you did, there's a bullet waiting for you now.
You broke a rule.
Yeah.
And also, who's going to want to be the boss if you could just start whacking bosses to take over?
You know, so you don't hear about it that much.
It's very rare.
And it's even more rare to kill a consulier because a consulier is his position is to save lives.
Right.
And like that night with me, if it was our family, this was two different families.
But if it was.
He's like the lawyer, the negotiator.
Yeah, but he's.
The mediator.
He's not.
He's liked and respected by all the captains and all the good fellas.
Okay.
Okay.
So if he calls you to a meeting at 2 in the morning, you go.
And you have all the confidence in the world, you're not getting killed.
And again, that's a sacred rule of the life.
So if you really believe in the life and he calls you, you go.
You know, that slipped over the years too because guys in that position shouldn't have been in the position.
They were cold-blooded killers.
You know, it's typically a position where a guy did his work, made his bones over the years.
He's well-liked.
He's smart.
He can, almost like you said, the movies make it like a lawyer, like Tom Hagan in The Godfather.
But as a matter of fact, Greg told me that's the best position in the family because you're untouchable and it's a lifetime assignment.
They can never break you.
If you're a captain, they could demote you.
If you're the underboss, he could demote you.
If you're a consulier, it's for life.
And that's the other reason it's such a trusted position.
So, you know, that's why Sammy DeBoe can be the consulier.
He'll kill too fast.
He'll kill you before he negotiates.
And was that just because of his nature?
Or was that because that was his job?
Yeah, no, it's probably his nature.
He would kill people whose job wasn't even to kill them.
Well, he.
Like, well, and they weren't all orders.
Usually it was orders from the top.
Right.
And he would be the guy because they know it would get done.
Okay.
But I'm sure, just like Greg and most of us, we had some that weren't put on record.
Just emotional killings.
Just not emotional, but where you know you're, even though you're not going to get the approval, you still want the guy.
So we were involved in a few of those with Greg, you know.
But I remember him telling me, I put so many on record and I've done so many hits for the family, they'll never question me.
If a guy turns up dead, they're not going to think it was him because he always does it by the book, except those four or five times, you know.
Right.
So, and that was what hurt us, our family, what led us into a war.
Carmine Sessa was a guy that I grew up with under Greg.
He's a little older than me, got his button first.
Then, when there was a split in the family, which we'll get to a little bit more, Vic Arena asked our consulier, Jimmy Angelina to approach all the captains.
If all the captains, and Vic Arena was named acting boss by Junior Persico when he got that 133 years with Scappy.
Okay.
Okay.
But he didn't want to step down.
He still wanted to be the official boss, even from prison.
And he has that right.
Some people say he was wrong to do that.
That's a valid opinion.
But the rule is if he doesn't step down himself or get voted out unanimously by all the captains, he's the boss.
So, Vic.
Ask Jimmy Angelina, the consulier, who all the men trust, to go and poll the captains, canvass them, see if they will all vote for me to be the official boss and vote Junior out.
The problem with that is Junior has two sons that are captains.
They're never going to turn on him, Junior Persico.
He has lifelong friends like Scappy, Greg, and others that are never going to turn on him.
But there's also guys that have vendettas against Junior Persico for whatever reasons over the years.
So they jumped at the opportunity.
So now there was a split in the family.
There was the Persico faction and the Arena faction.
And he has Jimmy go to all the captains, and they don't, you know, it's not even 50 50.
Most of them are back in junior.
I shouldn't say that.
It's probably about 50 50.
Within two weeks, Jimmy Angeline is dead, and he's a consulier.
Even me at this, you know, this is like 10 years into me being in the life.
I've never heard of a consulier get hurt or anything.
It's coveted, like I said.
Vic Arena gets a message to Junior Persico that Junior, that Jimmy was trying to take over the family.
He was talking to all the captains.
So Junior thinks he did the right thing by, you know, the treachery.
Turns out that wasn't the case, obviously, because now he promotes Carmine Sessa from captain to consulier.
Carmine and Greg Scarpa Sr. Close.
He grew up under him as another one.
He's like a son to him.
At 15, 14 years old, Carmine was already on record with Greg.
And that's why he put him there.
He figured he could convince Greg to come over.
But when he came to see Greg, Carmine, and Carmine Sessa came to see Greg, he told him that Vic wants me to talk to all the captains.
Greg busted out laughing.
He says he's going to do the same thing to you.
He's going to have you approach everybody and say that you're trying to take over the family, just like he did to Jimmy.
So, oh my God.
So, Carmine, this is the treachery that goes on behind the scenes.
So now, Greg, now Carmine goes back and he decides he's got to kill Vicarina, the boss, because he can't get the captains to come over.
He botches the attempt.
That's his first mistake.
He should have told Greg what he was going to do.
Vicarina would have been dead.
Instead, he wanted to go and do it on his own and try to be that big, big shot, the concierge, whatever.
He boxed.
He showed his shit trying to kill him.
Yeah, he had two other guys with him, and they just, I guess they weren't prepared.
I mean, they saw the details of what they tried to do.
Well, they were in a car, and they saw, they knew Vic's daily routine.
He came home just when he was supposed to, but he saw them in the car.
So I guess he took off.
So it was a, how'd you let them see?
I mean, there's a whole bunch of questions to that.
You know, and they still should have killed him.
I mean, if they really went there to do it, so he saw you.
Big deal.
Right.
You know, that's why I said they weren't really ready for that move.
I think they didn't have what it really took.
And if they would have had Greg with them, like I said, Vic would have been dead.
Right.
And I said, if he would have been on Vic's side, I remember later on in prison, Vic telling me he wishes he had us on his side.
And I says, well, if that was the case, there'd be a lot of dead Persicos.
That's what I told him.
So anyway, that's how that was.
Oh, just a month earlier, Jimmy called for Greg.
Okay, counselor, yeah, called for him.
Okay.
Sent to, he wanted him to come to his club to talk to Greg.
Right.
Greg had just gotten out of the hospital.
He had like multiple operations on his stomach.
He had ulcers from taking aspirins with nothing, just popping aspirins all day long.
He was nuts.
He didn't want to get a headache.
Even if he didn't have a headache, he took them.
And he had me taking them with him.
And I was taking them for years, you know, a couple of years, two, three, then I stopped.
But anyway, If you want to make it, if you switch those, the wire would probably be better.
It would probably be easier.
Oh, I guess.
Just switch the side.
Yeah, there you go.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Oh, very good.
Yeah, that won't be crossing you.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Perfect.
Cool.
Yeah, I got to keep the hair good.
I got several appointments today.
The aspirins.
What were those?
That was just not to get a headache?
Was there anything else?
Well, you know, we would go for a drink every night after the club.
The aspirins and the liquor have a nice little effect?
No, I think it's just so, you know, if you drink too much, you get a headache.
Aspirin Addiction and Ulcers00:07:54
Yeah.
He had the aspirins first, so he wouldn't get the headache.
Okay.
That was his thinking.
I do that with Advil sometimes.
I wonder if that's bad for him.
Oh, you know, I don't know.
I think it's the aspirin itself that is very acidic and caused these holes in his stomach.
So it all burst all at the same time.
Anyway, he almost died, and he had to get a blood transfusion.
This is another story that you can't make up.
30 of us show up.
To give him blood.
One match.
First of all, he should have taken the hospital blood.
It was screened.
They knew there was no AIDS in it.
And this is right at the height of AIDS.
One match.
One of our guys, Paulie Pumps, big muscle guy.
He's the match.
He gives him the blood.
It's tainted with AIDS.
So Greg winds up with AIDS.
And Paulie got it from needles.
He was a.
Steroids.
Steroids.
Oh, Jesus.
They would share them.
Yeah.
You know, he.
I always say it because, you know, again, the way things are now, it doesn't even matter.
But he wasn't gay.
I mean, everybody thought it was a gay thing.
And it was for the most part back then.
But he had more girls.
He was polished.
He's the first guy that taught me how to drink wine and taught me about the finer wines.
So poorly, but it was divine intervention that this is what God wanted for Greg to go out that way.
Or just dumb luck.
I don't know.
But he wound up with AIDS and he had enough money that he was able to survive it because he kept using all the trial drugs.
But eventually he lost so much weight and the dementia was kicking in.
And during the war he had dementia.
So we were out, you know, hunting.
How old was he this time?
Probably.
It's funny to say it.
I got to say early 60s.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I met him.
He was about.
51, 52, when Linda was 32.
He was like 20 years older than her.
And this is 10 years later.
It's 60, 61 years old.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's about it.
Yeah.
So, you know, I'm 60.
So it's like, you know, you're making me think about it.
I'm saying it's really, I don't feel like I'm ready to go soon.
No, dude, you look great for 60, man.
You're in great shape.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
But so eventually he died from that in jail.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, the war was a nightmare.
How long after he was in jail did he finally die?
Probably four years.
He still hung on.
Yeah, they sent him to the hospital in Springfield.
I heard at the end he was like literally, I want to say like 50 pounds.
Just really, you know, just started eating him up.
Now, was he, was like, in the beginning when he was trying to groom you and he told you he was treating you and bringing you up as his own son?
Right.
Was his objective to.
To make you turn you into a trained killer, uh, no, he was turning me into again the only way I could describe it is the consummate wise guy.
He wanted all of his guys when you walked into a place, they know you're a good fella, and not because you're banging the place up or getting fights, just the way you carry yourself and the way you talk to others, uh, the way you dress, you know, uh, the way you tip.
You know, there's a whole bunch of things, and he taught me every one of those.
He never walked into a restaurant where he didn't give the maitre d'etat a 10.
And then again, this is back 30 years.
Maybe he would give him 20 now, you know.
I still do that, you know.
The person that took me to the table at Burns, I tipped her.
It's just, you know, she walked me to the table and she was shocked.
But, so, no.
So you had to be, and you had to be able to kill and hurt people when they had to be hurt, you know.
So, yeah, it was a grooming.
And I tell you, baby steps, the first hit that I was.
Even privy to in any way, shape or form.
I was asked to give a guy a flat tire.
Okay, he gave me the ice pick and that morning very early in the morning I went I gave the guy a flat.
I didn't think none of it, I thought it was I silly.
I thought he parked in his place or or in his driveway or did something disrespectful and he just wanted to give the guy a flat.
The next day in the newspaper, man killed fixing flat tire.
So he's was shot and I didn't Say anything to Greg about it.
I read it.
I knew it.
I knew it was the car I gave the flat to.
But I think it was my first little test.
You don't have to wear those.
You can take them off.
You sure?
Yeah, I'll pause it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was my first test where he, if I would have came in, like panicky or Greg, is that the same car?
Like nervous.
But I knew better.
And I was probably only 20.
But I was already around these guys.
They treat me like an equal.
I go everywhere with Greg.
He's bringing me to meet other bosses, other captains.
So I can't, I just knew.
Okay.
A few months later, he asked me to go buy a shovel.
I buy the shovel.
A couple of, a year goes by, six months.
It's not like we're killing every day.
Somebody's got to go and it's Tony Freza.
So me and Gregory have to go buy shovels and dig a hole.
Okay.
That's what I said.
The hole was already dug.
Okay.
Is that the first murder you witnessed?
Yeah.
Yeah, that would be the first one that I was really, really privy to.
That I actually brought him to his demise.
But later on, the first one that I was a crash car now.
And I was right on the scene and I saw the guy getting popped and they jump in the car and drive away.
So that's what I'm saying.
You don't ask you to pull the trigger for quite a while until you've been around enough of them that you're kind of desensitized to it by the time you actually get there.
Yeah, you know, it's hard to use words.
That's a great word to use.
It's sad to say, you know, but.
That's a good word.
You do get desensitized.
That's a great way to put it because I fumble over that to say how it's possible.
Right.
You know, especially growing up the way I did from a normal family.
One of the cops on my case, Tommy Dade, is a dear friend to this day, said in an interview, you know, one of those interviews among cops where they're trying to figure out, you know, the mind of a killer or whatever you want to call it.
And he said, he used me, he says, if a sweetheart like Larry Mazzic could do it, anybody can do it.
So, you know, it's how you're brought up.
And here's the other thing you've got to realize.
We're recruited at a very young age where you're maybe easily misled or you like the cars.
You gravitate.
You like the Cadillacs.
You like all the money.
And you don't really know the bad side of it.
So you're recruited at.
15, 16, 17.
I was 17.
Guys that were younger than me that were coming into the club.
My point is all these years later, they can't recruit me.
Nobody could recruit me to do something like that.
I know better.
I mean, I, you know, I learned the hard way in some ways, but I would never, you know, I wouldn't, I, you know, the Hitman thing is another myth.
Recruited at Seventeen00:10:12
I'm not a Hitman.
You know, the newspaper one day put an article out, Hitman to testify against, what do they call him?
A G-Man.
G-Man.
Hitman to testify against G-Man.
Because I wound up, that was my saving grace at the end.
I mean, I made a deal with the government, but.
Uh basically, it was about the corruption, because all their cases were going to get blown out of the water.
You know?
So uh, whose cases were gonna get blown out of the water?
Well, all the case, all the guys that were going to be going to trial.
It came out now that Greg, my boss was uh, an informant for 30 years.
So they we didn't know who it was, who he was getting information from.
We thought it was either a cop or somebody on the other side during the war, which i'll explain to you further.
So we knew there was somebody.
But now he admits, fast forward, while he's away, that he was a government informer.
So he wanted leniency.
Even at the very end, he wanted leniency after all the murders we did during the war.
And the judge says, no, can't do it, not this time.
And he sentenced him 10 years, which was life for him anyway.
But I went off track there.
So if he was protected by the feds.
That's why the trials would get blown.
Not only that.
This agent was giving us addresses of our enemies.
So you're giving, he gave us an address.
He was a dirty agent.
He gave us an address.
So these are all the things, and I'll get to them, of the last casualty of the war.
Well, not really the last one, the last one that we did.
Then when I was away, there were a couple more when we all got arrested, just sort of cleaning up the mess.
So did this agent get in trouble?
Is that how Greg eventually got in trouble?
No, no, him and Greg were together for many, many years.
Like he was working for the feds for 30 years.
It goes all the way back to the Mississippi burning story.
You ever see that movie?
No, I've heard about it.
I'm familiar with it.
What is this?
Can you tell it for people who haven't heard it?
It's about these three civil service workers that they're fighting to abolish the racial tensions and all of that.
But the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi was still very strong.
And they killed these civil service workers.
One was black, and I think two were white.
And they buried the bodies.
The FBI couldn't get anybody to talk.
None of the Klan's guys would talk.
So they recruited Greg Scarpa.
They brought him to Mississippi.
And you could see it in the New York Times.
This is very public now.
He went, and the words that were told to me later on, because sometimes the FBI says more than they should, was that he did unspeakable things.
Yeah.
So, you know, that leaves you a little imagination.
And then later on, I heard he had a knife to their, you know, their groin area.
Uh, cut their dicks off.
It's you know.
Again I, you know I wasn't there, but you know these are things that you piece together yourself, unspeakable things.
He had a knife.
It's not unspeakable if you're talking about a KKK member, though.
No, oh yeah, he'll carry you, cut his ball's dick off.
Right, it's all right.
Right, we can smile about it.
So that's true.
So anyway, he gets uh, he finally gets to the guy that knows where the bodies were buried.
It's like only one guy really knew okay, and I, whether it was the second in command or whatever, and uh, so since that day I used the term carte blanche.
He had carte blanche with To do whatever he wanted in the street.
He was never going to get arrested.
And he took advantage of that.
To, you know, I mean, making a money-making machine and a killer.
He was making a good.
He must have been getting paid quite a bit to be.
Oh, he was getting paid too.
Yeah, yeah.
That came out later on in the trial.
The FBI agent, I won't mention his name because he did beat the case.
The reason he beat the case was, yeah, Greg's, Linda, his last wife, the one that I was with for 10 years, just about, had conflicting stories.
Earlier on, and this is my deduction, she was still on the payroll to keep her quiet because she knew a lot about.
This agent.
Okay.
And once they stopped paying her, I think she got scorned.
Okay.
Because now she had no money.
She was not living well.
Greg is dead.
So she comes clean and admits what she knew about him.
So the things that I knew.
Okay.
During the war, he would get.
We had this big.
I don't know if you're too young to remember these big shoe phones, these big.
the stockbrokers used to do it.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You know, now everybody has a little cell phone.
We didn't have phones back then.
So he would call somebody or the person would call on that phone and he would refer to the person as his girlfriend.
It's my girlfriend, meaning his connection, whoever it was.
We didn't know.
We thought it was a cop based on somebody's information.
Then we thought it could be somebody on the other side.
He says, someday I'll tell you.
He says, but he wouldn't tell us.
Me and Jimmy, my partner, we're the only three guys, we're together every day during the war.
Nobody else could come near us anymore because we knew somebody would give us up.
Our own friends now to get this over would kill us.
So we were one.
The three of us were one.
And he, what was I talking about?
Why did I lose my train of thought?
The big shoe phone calling his girlfriend.
Yes.
So we had, I had phone records.
Later on, the feds got these phone records.
So they knew exactly who he was talking to.
Okay.
We had a scanner.
Which had a secret code, like a five or six digit, any five or six numbers, random, 7216543.
We had that code.
So we were listening to the FBI and local task force police as they were following us and our enemies.
We knew when they were behind us, we knew where they were going.
So, how did we get this?
Then it came a little later on, we were getting this information that had to be from surveillance.
Like, it came back like we knew exactly.
What time this guy leaves his house 340 in the morning because he goes to a school bus company that he owns.
Okay, we get there at 320 340, the lights of the car turn on.
Somebody was doing surveillance, so that information later on we know came from him.
Right, we also had access to FBI badges and credentials because he's there was one guy.
He wanted to go and Call him out of the house as the FBI And get him in the car.
And once he gets put in the car, Greg was going to be sitting in the car.
I mean, picture that scene, how that guy would have felt.
No, he's in cuffs and he's sitting between me and Greg.
You know, because the guy knew us.
Actually, it was Wild Bill, Billy Cotola.
And he knew me, so I couldn't go to the door.
But there were a few guys that he didn't know that would dress in cheaper suits than we usually wear and go up to the door and show the credentials and call them out and tell them, we're not going to cuff you in the house.
You know, sometimes the FBI would do that.
Just, we'll cuff you outside.
You know, if they want to be nice.
Not to do that in front of the family, you know, because they know we're not typically going to shoot it out with them.
So, anyway, we had this whole plan.
So, all these different things led to FBI.
Later on, two of the agents themselves were sitting in the office with this agent, and they have an episode on The Sopranos about this.
When the biggest hit of the war happened, Nikki Black, Nikki Grancio, who was Vic's choice for consulier.
When we got him, he banged the desk, the agent, and he says, We're going to win this thing.
We're going to win this thing.
The other agent says, We?
And then they started putting pieces together, too.
This is what made them know.
This one agent underneath, this was a supervising agent who was bad.
The underneath agent, his name's Chris, doesn't matter, I won't give his last name, gets an address.
From surveillance of where Vic Green is hiding out.
That's our number one target.
If we kill Vic, the war's over right okay he, Greg gets this address.
Okay, we go there.
There's no house on the lot, it's a wrong address.
So the only person Chris gave that wrong address to was his superior.
How does Greg wind up with the same exact wrong address?
So now they knew that he saw they followed Greg there, or something.
Well, no, just he only Chris didn't give it to Greg.
Okay, this address, he gave the address from surveillance.
This is where to his superior.
Oh, right, right, right.
So that's the only right.
So he's wondering how Greg got that address, you know.
And this all came out in the trial later on, you know.
That's how you know.
How did Greg initially get like if he had that protection, how did that protection dissolve?
Because the other agents found out that Chris was dirty?
Well, no, Chris wasn't.
His superior.
His superior.
Yes.
And you won't give him.
Partially that.
Partially that.
We don't know his name.
Well, you know, it's alleged.
Chris Was Not Dirty00:15:25
His name's Lynn.
Okay.
You know, I don't like to come on here because he beat the case.
Okay.
He doesn't speak about it publicly.
He does.
He does.
He wrote a book.
You can read the book.
It's called Deal with the Devil.
Deal with the Devil.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
And he's done documentaries.
Oh, really?
So he's out there.
I mean, yeah, just.
You can research it and find his name.
His first name's Lynn.
And so the way it all ended was Greg, at the end of the war, okay, his dementia was setting in and he wasn't making good decisions.
His son, Joey, who's my godson, I stood up for him at confirmation, winds up getting in the drug business, okay?
And I'll backpedal that a little bit and tell you how the club went downhill.
But Joey was now in the drug business.
And I guess there was a corner that he claimed was his, and somebody else was selling there.
So he went with a baseball bat.
The guy pulls out a gun.
So he leaves.
He comes back to the house.
He tells his father.
His father calls me.
I was home.
Takes me five minutes, eight minutes to get there, depending on lights, you know, in Brooklyn.
I drive to the house, and he tells me what happened.
So I says, all right, I know the kid, Mike.
I'll go talk to him.
I know who he's talking about.
We go to the corner.
He's not there anymore.
He probably knew something was coming.
But before we go, Joey has a gun.
I took the gun from him, I put it in the glove compartment, and I locked it.
I said, We're not going to kill the kid.
Okay?
Your father asked me to talk to him and straighten this out.
This kid was becoming a little nutty.
He wanted to be like his father, you know.
Yeah, he's got that calmness.
Misled to be, right, to be the Grim Reaper.
So we go looking.
15, 20 minutes.
He's not around.
I said, let's go home.
I go back.
I tell Greg, I think it's best anyway.
I said, let everybody cool down.
We'll find them tomorrow.
Cooler heads.
He agreed with me.
He says, yeah, I think you're right.
I go home.
I'm not home one minute.
I don't have my clothes on.
I'm getting ready to get on.
And the phone rings, and it's Linda screaming on the phone, panicking like a lunatic.
She thinks Joey got killed, Greg's shot.
She just, I'll be right there.
She's telling me she needs me.
Come over, come over, please.
I get in the car, I drive back.
On the way, I pass the block where this kid lives.
There's unmarked cars, there's police cars, ambulances, fire department.
I mean, it's a crime scene.
I go around the long way.
Go to the house.
I get to the house.
The car that I was in has bullet holes all over it.
Joey's friend, who was in the car with me also, with Joey, he was sitting in the back.
Joey was sitting next to me, is in the back seat, gasping, trying to get a breath of life.
Every once in a while, I hear, he's dying.
I go upstairs into the house.
Greg is on the phone.
He has a scotch in front of him, he's got a towel, he got his eye shot out.
Okay?
And he's telling the parole people, because we were already, he was arrested and was given bail, which is the biggest, the biggest farce in the history of mankind because no mob guys get bail.
Nobody.
They gave him bail.
And he had the bracelet on.
So they were calling this as your alarm went off.
You were further than 50 feet from your house.
And he's denying it.
He's like, no, I never left.
I've been here the whole time.
Now, I got to bring him to the hospital.
Okay.
What do you mean when you say he got his eye shot out?
Oh, he went there with Joey.
Joey was probably still breaking his chops.
We got to get this guy.
We can't let him do this.
He pulled a gun on me.
And probably I knew he used to get under his father's skin.
He's like, all right, you want to kill him?
Let's go fucking do it.
You know, just like that.
Just let's go.
So he goes.
They were waiting.
They were in front of the house.
And there's about eight guys.
As soon as Greg gets out, he starts shooting.
They're all shot.
They're all putting up and shot.
There's kids in the backseat.
He gets hit in the head.
Joey runs.
He runs in the driveway.
I heard a kid hit him in a garbage pail or something.
So he wound up.
Surviving and the father gets his eye shot out.
So I got to bring him to the hospital.
There's four or five hospitals in Brooklyn that I could bring him to.
He insists on going to the hospital that saved him, Mount Sinai in Manhattan.
So I got to go through toll boots with cops it's the days when the cops manned them, the tunnels.
I got to drive through Manhattan with this guy dying in the car, and I do it, I'm so.
I was loyal to a fault back then.
Oh, the kid's still in the back seat.
No no no, we took him, I took him in my car.
Greg, big Greg, he's got a guy.
He's gonna die, he's gonna bleed to death, right.
So I walk into the hospital with him and the nurse comes and she says, oh my God, what happened?
I said, he fell in the yard.
I think a pipe went in his eye.
So she wheels him in the, they wheel him in the back.
They put him on the gurney.
They wheel him in the room.
She gives me paperwork to fill out.
She comes back out.
She says, you stay right here.
I know she saw a bullet.
So when she walks away, I go to the door.
I open it.
I says, Greg, I got to go.
He's laying there like this.
He goes like this to me.
Thumbs up.
That's the last time I've seen him in the free world.
Really?
Yeah.
That was the last year because now they locked him up and he couldn't get bail again.
And they had to leave him in Rikers Island for a while, which is a jungle.
But they had the best AIDS unit because of all the junkies in there.
And a few months later, I got arrested.
You know, they just rounded everybody up from the war.
They had guys talking.
Four or five guys flipped.
Carmine Sessa, our consul here, the first one to flip and call a big meeting.
And at that meeting, everybody got arrested except him.
So, I mean, the treachery and the backstabbing is there's no, there's no.
It's just, it's mind boggling.
How the fuck did he survive getting shot in the eye?
With AIDS and everything.
Yep.
Yeah.
And then the bullet, like what?
Well, here's what happened.
Here's what they said.
It didn't go in this way.
Okay.
It must have deflected off the car and went in this way.
Oh.
So it didn't penetrate deep into the brain.
Okay.
Right.
Yeah.
So.
What a lucky and unlucky story.
Yeah, both.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So, but he was running out of his nine lives.
You know, the AIDS was going to eventually, now, being in prison, he was certainly not going to, you know, survive.
You don't get good medical attention in there.
Yeah uh, and how much time did you actually end up doing in prison?
10 years.
I got a 10-year sentence.
What was your whole trial?
What was your whole thing?
Well uh, I didn't go to trial.
I was offered the deal uh, to to tell them what I knew, basically about the corruption.
Okay, I walked out three times because they wouldn't let my partner Jimmy, come in under the same umbrella as me.
They wanted to catch him.
You know, make pub.
He was on the limb, Jimmy was on the limb, I was in.
I got arrested in Florida, in Cocoa Beach, as a matter of fact, Oh, really.
I came down for a vacation after the war.
I figured, let me just get out of here.
This way, they don't see me around.
And Jimmy and I had plans.
He was going to come down and meet me, and we were going to drive off and go somewhere.
We set up our pipelines just to stay out of their faces.
Time would have helped.
Time would have helped because our boss, I confuse you with our boss all the time.
This Joe T was our acting boss on our side for the Persicos.
And he went on the lamb.
They caught him, I think, five, six years later.
Okay.
And they made a deal with him like that for five years.
And he's the boss.
Okay.
Because there's new prosecutors.
They have their own cases.
They don't want this one thrown up now.
So they just, so if we would have went on the lam, we would have probably got that same five-year, seven-year deal, you know.
But ultimately, they says, okay, because they couldn't find him.
They came back and they says, all right, we'll keep the door open for Jimmy.
But, and I couldn't admit knowing where he was.
So I says, I'll see if I can get a message to him.
You know, i'll try to the grapevine my family if somebody couldn't.
You know, I have no idea where he is.
You know right, I really didn't uh, but I knew how to contact him right, we had that, you know uh.
So he uh, he was able to come in and you know, I I had to cop out to zero to life.
So if I would have lied or I would have gotten uh, if they would have found out that I didn't come clean on things that I did uh, I could have been charged or I could have got life.
Ultimately he gave me 10 years.
The judge uh, And, you know, the guys that like Carmine got three years, Sammy got five years.
So the guys that really give them a lot will get in the door immediately, you know.
But they didn't really like me because it was the corruption.
It wasn't, you know, not that they didn't like me personally, but the case that I brought them was basically their own.
Right.
You know, so they weren't going to fight tooth and nail.
Give this reformed guy, give him a second chance.
You know, they did what they had to do.
They said he lived up to his obligation.
How much time did Lynn get?
Did he get anything?
Oh, he didn't do anything.
No, he beat it.
Yeah, like I said, he walked out.
But the judge, it was a New York Supreme Court.
Because they didn't want to leave his stain.
Exactly.
The judge said in his closing argument or closing, whatever that record is, I read it.
Said, even though you're walking out of this courtroom, I'm not convinced you're innocent.
And he was the jury.
He was the judge and the jury.
He waived the jury trial.
Oh, my God.
And he ripped into him.
He ripped into the FBI for how they.
allowed this monster, that's what he called him, to survive all these years in a partnership with you guys.
So he ripped them an oar, to put it that way.
And he was the best judge out of all the judges I was around.
I mean, I had one, our first judge, what's the word, reclused himself or recused himself.
He stepped down.
He told us, he says, you can't get a fair trial with me.
I think you're all guilty, he said.
And I feel like an honorary member of the Colombo family.
That I've heard so many of your cases.
He says, you can't get a fair trial.
So he left.
We get this other guy, Sifton, who was the most miserable human being on earth.
Even other judges hate him.
They just was a hated man.
And I wound up with him.
And the same judge, earlier on, at the very, very beginning, when I first met Linda, I was on the fire department test.
I took the test.
I got a 99, and I got a 95 on the physical.
I was going to be called within a year to the academy.
This same judge, Because at the time, minorities and women claimed the test was too tough.
It wasn't fair.
So it took him two years to rule on it.
And then another two years to set the next date.
So four years went by.
I'm not blaming him, but it just shows you how some things happen in life.
I would have taken the fire department.
I was still early on.
I didn't know Greg.
It wasn't a year and a half in, two years into my relationship with him when now he knew and he was bringing me along.
And he's the same judge that had to sentence me.
Wow.
How wild is that?
It's amazing.
It's amazing.
So, but this judge, going back to Judge, it's something like Rebach or Reichbach.
R E R I C H B A C H, Reichbach.
But research him.
Reichbach, okay.
Yeah, he was a really.
Is he still.
He died.
No, he died.
He died.
But this guy, you know how they always wear the black robes?
Yeah.
He didn't.
He wore a John Gotti suit.
Really?
Had his hair impeccable, but he was a smart, smart guy.
And he would ask me questions, like while I'm sitting in the, you know, even though the lawyers are asking questions, he says, I want to ask a question.
And he'd ask me a question.
And very brilliant, just brilliant.
And he was very, very polite to me, you know, like the other judges, the Fed judges, you're a piece of garbage to them.
You're nothing but meat that they're going to put away for life.
They're all the same team.
This guy was very fair.
And that's why when it had to get thrown out, it got thrown out, but he told them, you're not innocent in my eyes.
Wow.
Yeah.
So, but he was able to, you know, obviously keep his pension and everything else.
So he would have lost all of that.
What kind of a prison were you in?
Was it like a federal maximum security?
Maximum security.
And then as time went on, I wound up in a medium.
Okay.
A medium.
But the very, very.
But they're still pretty violent.
Yeah.
But they are.
But you could avoid that.
It's not like, you know, again, like you see TV.
There are prisons like that where there's just gangs and they're always, you know, that's their life.
Yeah.
You know, but most federal prisons are not that way.
If you don't, if you're not into the state penitentiaries or gay stuff, you'll avoid the fights.
They'll actually fight over a guy.
If you don't gamble, which I did every single day, but I made sure everybody had put the cash up, you know, stamps was cash in prison.
You want a better football game?
Cash has to be put up.
That was my main business, bookmaking.
And I booked every day that I was away.
I supported myself.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
I'll tell you, this is a funny story.
I said it a thousand times.
You're allowed three books of stamps, everybody's equal.
You can't have more than three books of stamps.
Because you can use that for currency in there.
Three books of stamps in what time period?
At any one time.
Like if they come and shake my room down, my cell.
You can only have three in possession.
Right.
If they see 10 books, they're going to write me up.
Okay.
Maybe I go to the hole.
Maybe I get extra duty or whatever.
When I got released, I had 2,000 books of stamps.
Oh, my God.
What the fuck?
I left them in there with different guys.
I gave one guy 500, one guy, you know.
So it made their time.
Because you use them for, I pay a guy a book of stamps to clean my room once a week.
Pay another guy a book of stamps to bring me good food out of the like broccoli and hard boiled eggs.
I don't want to eat the garbage, so you know it's you can live a little better, right?
If you you know if you want to, if you if you got that mind, that's was always my mind.
I said, I'm gonna put these 10 years back on at the end.
Were you still in contact with any of these mob guys when you were inside?
Um, no, it's because everything's monitored, the phone calls, you know, you can't really call, right?
But didn't you say some of the guy like uh, one of the original bosses was still the boss after he got locked up?
Yes.
Like, how do you do that?
Visits.
He would do it on visits.
He would have, you know, Chucky was a captain that was his nephew that would go visit him.
His son would go visit.
So he would bring, and they put him all the way in California, Lompoc.
And he still would get messages.
Visits from California00:03:20
And that was also a problem during the war because his brother, Teddy, was not very smart.
He was a, respectfully, he was a simple minded guy.
Okay?
He wasn't shrewd.
He wasn't street smart.
But he was.
Going because he's a brother, he can go deliver messages.
And he wasn't bringing the right messages back.
Ultimately, we found out he was soft coated because Vic made him a captain.
So he sort of liked Vic.
And I remember Junior saying, How do you make him a captain?
His own brother.
How do you make.
You know, but he did it with the Machiavelli tactic.
You know, by bringing one of the brothers as a captain, you know, he's showing good faith.
Right.
You know?
Right, right, right.
But he was bringing like Greg would.
Say, you bring this message to Junior and tell him that we are not going to stop shooting until they, the first word out of their mouth at the meeting has to be, you are recognized as the boss.
Teddy would come back and say, nah, he wants you to keep talking.
He wants peace.
He wants peace.
He wants to keep talking it out.
And Greg told me, there's no way Junior said that.
There's no fucking way Junior said, his message would be, take that cocksucker out.
Right.
One person he had an answer to in the whole wide world, Vic Arena, and he wasn't happy.
That's the greed.
That's that ego.
I want this position officially.
You did have it.
You were an official acting boss.
So all you had to do was run the ship and split it with Junior.
I think he was worried he was going to be knocked down when Carmine's son, Junior Persico's son, came home.
And I don't think that was going to happen.
I don't think that was the case.
My personal opinion.
And I had conversations with Ali about it.
I remember saying if he would have behaved, he could have kept the position.
He says, I come out, I take that position, I'm back in the can in six months.
So not immediately anyway.
Maybe ultimately he would have wanted the position, but he was a cousin.
He was Junior's cousin.
So he should have been more loyal.
But Greg said he wasn't a powerful, tough guy.
He was a very big earner, big money.
And Junior thought he could control him and never lose the power.
But the problem was other people controlled him too.
Greg had said if he put a guy like himself, if he would put a guy like me, not me, Greg telling me this, Or, uh, Joe T named four or five guys, they would never try to take the family from Junior, you know.
And they anybody comes to tell them to do it, they're gonna tell them, Talk like that once more, you're dead, right?
You know, you're done, right?
I don't want to hear that, you know.
Vic didn't do it, he listened.
And then John Gotti was integral, major problem for us because he wanted Vic to win.
The reason is Vic's underboss, Joe Scopo, grew up with Johnny, John Gotti.
And John, all the egos put together, his was still bigger.
He wanted to be the boss of all bosses.
John Gotti as a Problem00:14:33
There isn't anymore.
You know, there's equals.
At the commission, they're all equal.
But he wanted to have the strongest vote on the commission.
So if Vic wins the war, and this came out later, it's a fact, they were going to kill Vic themselves and let Joe Scopo become the boss.
So him and John would have two votes on the commission.
Wow, man.
Yeah.
Shit is ruthless.
It's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
What is it like?
Is there anything left over in this kind of mob gang world today?
What the fuck is it?
I'm going to tell you what Nick Pileggi said in one of the write ups for our Ultimate TV series.
What's left is a few scattered guys.
Going after the roadkill or picking up the road.
I forgot the exact words, but that there's just a few guys left.
There's vultures picking meat off the bones.
Exactly.
Yeah, there's nothing left.
Because the guys that I grew up under, that I saw and I had to answer to, were seasoned, old school guys that you may see in some movies.
Right.
Okay.
Now they scrape the bottom of the barrel.
They don't dress the same.
They don't act the same.
They don't have the same ethics.
You know, they wear hoodies like street gangs.
I mean, you know.
It's a different culture for sure.
It is.
It is.
And the families are totally weakened.
I think.
It must be harder to kill people nowadays, I would think.
Oh, it is.
And I think, you know what?
I had always said that was our downfall.
I said, if I ever started something, I would say no killing.
Beat the guy up until he leaves on his own.
Just keep beating him up.
Every time you see him, give him a beat.
Eventually he's going to leave.
It's just as good as and we don't have to face life.
I believe, and Sammy told me just recently, and he might have heard it somewhere too, there's a no-kill edict.
If that's the right word.
Edict is like a law, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's the exact words he used.
There's a no-kill.
So there hasn't been.
You haven't read it.
I mean, you used to read, you know, almost a few a month.
A few a month.
You know, did you see a body?
Somebody got killed, somebody's missing.
Now you don't.
I mean, the last one that I remember reading about was a famous pizza place.
Okay, that was somewhat mob owned.
I say that because I think there were partners.
There was a mob guy and the guy that knows the recipes.
Yeah, exactly.
They split up, there was a problem.
Okay.
And one of the guys tried to take the recipe and they killed him.
He was killed in front of his house.
Had something to do with the recipe, the pizza recipe.
LB.
Wow.
It's Pomoni Gardens.
That's ridiculous.
It's a great, yeah, it's still a great pizza.
If you ever go to Brooklyn, go to LB.
LB?
Yeah.
It's Pomoni Gardens.
And there's Pomoni Ice, it's phenomenal, too.
But I got a book for you, so I'm going to give you the book.
Okay.
I wish you would have read it first.
Yeah.
Because a lot of these things I'm telling you, you'd sort of would have known about it already.
Like the restaurants and stuff in New York are just to die for.
But not right now.
I mean, I wouldn't go to New York if.
If everyone I know, everyone I know that was born and raised in the Brooklyn, Queens area, they they never want to go to New York.
Like, I would rather, no, I would rather cut my arm off and go back to New York, especially now with the politics, the way things are going on.
It's terrible now, it's it's terrible.
It's worse now, yeah.
It's it's horrible.
I mean, it's dangerous, it's more dangerous than we were there, and some people want us back.
They said, really, more dangerous when you guys were in the street, none of this shootouts and and you know, uh, the nonsense that you're seeing now, just the rioting and looting and stuff, they couldn't.
When Al Sharpton marched through our neighborhood, okay, the cops knew it.
They were happy.
We had more mob guys there from the five families lining up the street.
They weren't allowed on the sidewalk.
They had to walk.
They could do their march.
We didn't care.
But they were not going to come near our stores or our houses, okay?
So we lined the street where they were walking.
Until one knucklehead, and I know the kid too.
I knew his brother well, runs in there and stabs Al Sharpton.
He stabbed him.
He had arrest.
He did time for it, yeah.
What the fuck?
Right in front, there's cops all around.
All the mob guys are there.
And he just runs in the middle of the parade and steps out sharp.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's insane.
Needless to say, he's not a good fella.
Never made it there.
How did you end up getting in touch with Robert De Niro?
Well, the cops that were on my case, I told you, became their security guys.
Yeah.
And he was looking for somebody from the life that can give him some tips on.
Playing like a Frank Sheeran type of guy, a mob guy, a hitman, or whatever.
And they all said me.
And it's funny, too.
I've said this a few times.
It's a double edged sword.
They all said me.
So I'm going to tell you how to kill a guy, how to get rid of weapons, how to bury a body.
I mean, that's what you would think.
But he also wanted to get the verbiage, the words, and situations.
How would this happen?
How would a guy, knowing he's in trouble, Not run.
Not just run when you reach into your pocket.
You know, things like that.
Because there's a scene there where he's got to kill a guy.
And the guy knows he's in trouble.
So I told him how Greg did it.
Greg used to have a handkerchief.
And he would sneeze or cough.
And he'd reach it, go to his pocket.
And the guy would see the handkerchief come out.
And he'd actually be relieved.
So he'd wipe his nose.
When he put the hanky back in, he comes out with the gun.
So that was a little trick of his.
Yeah.
Psychological.
Yeah.
I told him how we got rid of weapons, and all of that's in the movie.
I mean, probably a dozen things that I sat and talked to him about.
So, was it like a one time meeting?
No, I was with him probably three or four times.
Where did you guys meet?
Like, what did you guys do?
Well, we met at his.
He has a hotel in Greenwich Village.
Yeah.
And his office is right there.
Okay.
So the first time I spent about three hours with him and he was just listening to me.
And I kept saying, Mr. D, you want to say something?
I mean, you know, he said, no, no, keep going, keep going.
He was just listening and getting words and hearing about hits from my book.
Then the next time he gave one of the cops a list of things and I got on the phone with him.
Then another time we went back and we sat in his living room.
We went to Scorsese's house one time.
Really?
Yeah, yep.
And he wanted me to meet Martin Scorsese.
And he had two casting directors there who were also listening to me.
So they were all using it for their own casting reasons.
And ultimately, I was going to get a part.
I didn't know what.
And it might have been a small part where I killed Albert Anastasia in the barber seat, which was a famous or infamous hit in New York back in the 50s.
So it was an incredible experience.
And then probably a month or so later, I'm in Nick Pileggi's house.
And Nick Pileggi wrote Goodfellas, Casino, Part of American Gangster.
Yeah, he's the three of them.
You know, my wife was with me throughout the whole thing.
We said, We are sitting with cinematic royalty.
That's what it is.
The Nero Scorsese and Pileggi.
It was amazing.
Are you kidding me?
And then I met him twice after.
As a matter of fact, the last day, I got a picture here I could show you.
The last day of filming, he invited us in to watch the last scene.
It was him.
He was filming just, you know, a small scene.
Just, when you see the movie, you'll see that he has to put a lock on a truck.
And there's significance to that.
But it was funny.
He made it, he tied a knot two different ways.
And Scorsese caught it.
He says, Bob, earlier on, you tied a different knot.
So he had to tie it the same exact way.
So De Niro went like this to him.
But they're fried.
I mean, and he went back and he had to do the scene again, you know?
Yeah, it's crazy.
You think about all like the little continuity details like that when you're making a movie.
Yeah.
Everything has to be done.
Because in case they got a camera.
Kelly got to watch him film my scene true to camera.
He still uses the old fashioned cameras.
A lot of guys use these new things, handhelds and stuff.
He uses the old, the big one that rolls.
Film cameras?
Yeah, the old, just to, yeah.
And she was able to look through it and watch exactly what he saw.
So they would cut, and we did my scene.
When you see it, it's really short, but it's probably 20 seconds.
We filmed it 40 times.
Really?
Once he got too much of a brick wall, and he said, people aren't coming to the movies to see a brick wall.
He always got it.
It's always.
Then another time, one of the girls walking by me smiled.
And he says, What are you smiling about?
What do you think?
You're in a movie?
She was walking a baby.
So she couldn't smile.
And then, you know, Big Bob, one of the cops that actually wrote the forward for my book, the only part of the book I didn't write, because I had to write about myself, you know, in the forward.
He's the bouncer, the bodyguard.
He's a big guy.
He's probably.
Told us this, it comes walking through.
They want them to look menacing, so a bunch of times he came through and he would give me the eye, and that makes people think he was in on it because nobody knows for sure if the bodyguard was in on it or he wasn't.
So, him looking at me, you know, gives and then we walk up the steps.
And then I played, I had another part in a TV series called The Perfect Murder, and I played a corrupt ex cop working for the mob.
So, and the mob guy I was working for was Joe Pesci's character in Casino.
Oh, no shit.
Tony Spalatro.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's funny, too.
We have on our desk a possible story about more about this guy because he worked.
The bar, I was behind the bar in the scene, and I also popped out of the back seat with a gun.
You ever see that?
It's in every show.
Somebody comes out of the back seat with a gun.
Oh, yeah, of course.
Yeah, I was the guy.
But in the scene in the bar was this guy, and now it's called Crazy Horse 2.
It's a cabaret in Vegas.
But it's.
Was a violent.
I mean, the bouncers in there were killing people, burying them in the desert.
If they weren't paying bills, they were beating them.
I mean, it was bad.
There was drugs.
It's almost like a Studio 54 type of movie.
But we have, you know, we have somebody that wants us to see if we could get our producer to do that.
My wife's the manager now.
Oh, cool.
She does all the managing for all the people we bring in.
And we've got several.
We've got several.
We have a show starting.
They're going to start filming it in June.
It's all about paranormal and Bigfoot and stuff like that.
But it's mob related because it's an ex mobster that really, really believes in this stuff.
And he goes tracking them down.
Tracking Bigfoots?
Yeah, and paranormal stuff.
But they have all the equipment.
And they say that we're using our skills from tracking people in the street that we had to go after years ago.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
But it's going to be, I think it's going to be lighthearted, but it's real.
But there's going to be humor in it.
I mean, there's no way it's going to be because these are ex-mob guys.
Dramatic.
And they're talking like mob guys.
And he tells, there's a scene, he tells one of them, who's a martial arts guy, he says, We run into Bigfoot.
You're going to have to use all your moves on him.
Dead serious.
But I laugh too.
Like, you just did it.
Or, if you see a ghost, you have to pull your gun on him, shoot him.
Well, they have stuff.
They're going to have rabbis and priests in case they run into an exorcism situation.
But we have a little portfolio.
Oh, that's awesome.
Anyway, yeah.
What was it like going into Martin Scorsese's house?
Where was his house?
Okay, it's near Central Park in Manhattan.
Very exclusive.
It's a four story brownstone.
Those are very, very rich houses.
Yeah, very, very.
What does that mean?
It's a type of house.
Yeah.
They're all built together, side by side.
Is it like on the ground level?
There's a ground level.
Okay.
Then there's four stories.
But each one is your house.
They're huge.
So we go in, a butler opens the door.
Is it kind of like what.
I don't know if you've ever seen the pictures of Jeffrey Epstein's house in New York.
Probably.
Where it's like between these big buildings and you just go in.
It looks like a cathedral.
Yeah.
No, this, no, this, I know what you're talking about.
It's more.
How would you describe it, Kel?
Can you find it on Google?
Yeah.
You could, yeah.
Katie, can you find a picture of a brownstone house in New York?
Yeah.
So anyway, his was white.
Yeah.
And it's four stories.
We walk in.
I don't know I'm going to his house.
I know I'm meeting him, but I'm assuming we were going to go to a restaurant or a studio or something.
Yeah.
So he brings us upstairs, the butler, to like the third floor.
And it's one huge living room.
Okay.
There was another room the other way.
It might have been a bedroom where, but so we're sitting down.
All of a sudden, I just start walking around.
And Kelly's telling me, sit down.
You can't be walking around.
We don't know where you're at.
You're just looking around at shit.
So I go.
I see the Oscars.
He has a thing.
Oh, no way.
So I'm looking at the Oscars.
This is Marty's house, Martin Scorsese's house.
So I turn around.
Who's standing in the door?
De Niro.
So he comes over.
He says hello, sits down.
Then Marty comes down with the two girls.
And it was amazing.
We were talking, and it was, you know, a couple of times I cursed and I apologized because I don't like to curse.
I don't, you know, anyway, it's another story.
But, and I would say, I'm sorry, excuse me.
Nick Pileggi's Oscars00:04:48
One of the, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Those are all over New York.
Yeah, and they, you know, my glasses off at a distance.
Yeah, exactly.
So you see the red one in the middle there?
That one?
Yeah, but it was like that, but a white one.
It was a white one.
Okay, okay.
You might have zeroed in on his house, who knows?
It just blends in with the rest of the houses.
You can't even tell it's.
Exactly.
But inside, they're incredible.
And, you know, they're very expensive.
I mean, very expensive.
Nick Pileggi.
And it has those, like, stairways that just go right to the sidewalk?
Yes.
Every single one of them?
And then there's a basement.
There's a floor level also.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, so it's a style from back then.
Yeah, those are cool looking.
Nick, when we went to see Nick Pileggi, he had the.
We went on the second floor.
And.
There was nothing but books.
When he came in, he came from upstairs down.
He says, My wife made me buy this unit also for my books.
He lives in the penthouse.
And that downstairs was sort of his office, his reading, his library.
Yeah, amazing.
But he had a big spread of food out for us.
I'll never forget it.
He says, My mother would never forgive me if I didn't put out food for guests.
God, that would have been so surreal.
No, it was amazing.
He's a very nice guy, Nick Bullitt.
Very nice.
I call him, he always answers back.
Who's Scorsese?
No.
Oh.
Nick Pelleggi.
Pelleggi, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, at the beginning, I was in contact a lot with De Niro, but he wound up with personal issues with going through divorce.
And I think, other thing, now with the pandemic, he's got businesses all over New York that got to be getting killed.
His restaurants, his hotels.
Oh, man.
So he's sort of just been, I think he's in seclusion almost, you know?
Scorsese, I haven't talked to again.
But, you know, when we were leaving, He made us come back in because his wife wanted to meet us.
So we went back in and we met her.
And then at the final day of filming, she was there.
And she has, I believe, Parkinson's.
I think that's what it is.
So she's having a little trouble.
But she remembered us all these months later.
She's a nice guy.
He was very personable.
Like, De Niro's quiet.
Yeah.
Shy.
Yeah.
Scorsese talks.
He laughs.
You know, he's outgoing.
You know, they're almost opposites.
That's so funny, man.
Yeah, yeah.
And the other thing I learned is that these casting directors, you don't have to be the greatest actor.
Okay?
Because if you see, if you start watching a lot of De Niro's movies, his idiosyncrasies are always there.
You know, most of his movies, the way he laughs, the way he looks at you, you know.
So when they're casting somebody, they're looking for certain things.
You know, like.
Not that he's not a great actor.
I mean, because he's done things like I saw out of character, like The Deer Hunter and Cape Fear.
Those were fabulous.
I mean, fantastic.
The gangster movies to me, you know.
He's got like some fascination with gangster mob stuff.
Yeah, well, it's been a huge moneymaker.
It's a huge moneymaker.
So, you know.
But, you know, and then there's guys that can, you know, go back on stage and play Hamlet, you know.
Right.
You know, but those, you know, those are.
But anyway, I've noticed that.
That's why you see a lot of the same guys in the same movies.
Not because they're great actors, just because they almost don't have to act.
Like in The Sopranos.
Yeah, it's almost like he's got that brand built around himself where it's like, you know, you just want this guy in your movie because it makes it marketable, you know?
Right.
Oh, yeah, no, definitely.
No, he's a brand, without a doubt.
You know, he's in a movie, it's going to sell.
So, well, he still may be in mine.
And let me, the name of the book, I'm going to bring it to you.
I wish I had it here to show you.
Yeah.
To show the fans, too.
It's called A Life.
Tell people where they can find it and where they can download it, whatever.
It's called A Life.
There is a Kindle version.
The difference is you don't get the pictures.
And I have some really nice pictures in there of all the people I've met, including De Niro, Paleggy, Mike Madsen, Armand DeSante, who wrote it.
Testimonial that's just was phenomenal, and he's a great guy.
Armand DeSante, he's the one that played John Gotti, the original, and he also not John Travolta.
No, he wasn't good for that part, and I like John Travolta, but not for that part.
Yeah, so yeah, you could get it on there, okay, or you can go to my website, it's www.larrymaza-thelife.com.
Awesome, yeah, and there I sign every book that goes out.
Armand DeSante Portrays Gotti00:02:06
Some mornings I spend hours signing them.
Like, probably after your show, I'll get a bunch, I hope.
And so I sign everyone.
And like I said, the pictures, it's worth getting the book for the pictures.
Right.
Those pictures, you could put a face to every name I said today, like Junior Persigo, you know, and then Carmine Sessa.
When you look and see them, I think they're important.
I think they're important.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love pictures.
Yeah.
And you get a picture of Greg, the Grim Reaper.
And when you see the picture of him, you're going to say, On the mobster in the dictionary is his picture.
Oh, really?
Yeah, he dressed that way.
You know, the fancy watch, the big picture.
And he was the guy who did the 666, like he would carve 666 when he came in.
No, no, no, no.
That's a myth.
What happened was we all had beepers back then.
We didn't have cell phones.
So we would have a code.
Like, say, the guys from 13th Avenue, which was our Avenue, were going to beep us.
It would be 013.
So we knew who was beeping us.
Then the next thing would be a number of where to meet.
And we had like 12 different numbers.
One was Nathan's, one was LB, one was, you know, a McDonald's somewhere, one was a diner.
Yeah.
All over the city.
Actually, to try, you know, Jersey.
So we knew this was the, and if it was 11, it was the Persicos.
He took the code 666.
So they knew it was him.
So he would put 666 8.
which was a restaurant in sheepshead bay dash the time at 1 30.
so that's how we communicated because we didn't have cell phones was did he did he listen to like heavy metal music or was he like into the devil or no he liked uh no definitely not no no he was uh traditional he liked uh he liked barry white he liked that type of music okay he liked uh frank sinatra of course yeah uh you know jerry vale and i listen to all that even to this day i still like that kind of music yeah Yeah.
Well, cool, man.
Dude, thank you so much.
War Time Communication Codes00:01:15
This was a pleasure.
Super fascinating story.
What I like about, what I really enjoyed was we talked about some different things.
You know, I'm tired of talking about the hits from before the war.
You know, they were never easy.
I regret those.
The hits during the war, talking about them, it's a little easier because it was kill or be killed.
You know, you had to survive.
And you couldn't show weakness.
But a lot of people want to hear, oh, the first time you did this, the first time you did that, I'm so happy you didn't do that.
There's more to me than that.
Yeah.
No, I think it's a lot more fun to just get to know somebody and just have a loose conversation than just like go, you know, do bullet point questions like some of the other interviews.